By morning, the fog had thinned, but Hollow Deep never really cleared. Even in daylight, the streets seemed to keep secrets in their corners, as though the stones themselves conspired to hide what mattered.
Zayway woke to the sound of distant metal — not the steady clang of a smith, but short, irregular strikes. Someone fixing something broken, or breaking something that couldn't be fixed.
He stepped outside, tugging his hood up against the lingering chill. The neighborhood was alive in its own quiet way. Doors cracked open just enough for eyes to peek out. A boy ran barefoot down an alley with a rolled sheet of parchment tucked under his arm. An older woman swept her doorstep, but paused every few strokes to glance at the rooftops.
⸻
Zayway took the side streets, avoiding the wider lanes where merchants called for attention and pickpockets brushed too close. Here, the walls were close enough to touch on both sides, their bricks slick with moisture.
He passed a smithy where a hammer rang out, each strike sending up brief sparks that died before hitting the ground. The weapon taking shape wasn't a sword or dagger, but a crescent-shaped blade with jagged teeth along its inner curve.
The smith didn't look up, but Zayway could see pale marks along his forearms — not scars, but shapes. Etched into the skin, the lines twisted into patterns that almost seemed to shift as the muscles moved.
Sigils.
⸻
He didn't linger. In Hollow Deep, staring too long at the wrong thing was an invitation.
The next lane over opened into a smaller market than the one near Mare's stall. The goods here were stranger — animal bones carved into charms, rolls of paper inked with diagrams, and jars of insects preserved in cloudy liquid. A woman with her hair bound in copper wire turned to speak with a customer, her voice low, but Zayway caught the words binding ward.
Two stalls down, a man hunched over a wooden crate filled with powders in tiny glass vials. He poured one into a shallow dish, and the powder began to swirl without wind, patterns forming like water ripples frozen mid-motion.
⸻
Past the market, a narrow bridge crossed one of the Deep's buried canals. Water gurgled below, black and slow-moving. He stopped halfway across when he noticed a piece of parchment nailed to the bridge rail.
The ink was smeared, but he could still read it:
KEEP AWAY FROM THE LOWER STREETS AFTER DUSK
—By Order of the Watch
Someone had scrawled a reply beneath it:
The Watch won't save you. The street chooses who walks it.
The parchment fluttered in the breeze, and for a moment, Zayway felt as though the air itself had gone still around him.
⸻
He reached the edge of a district he didn't know well. The buildings here leaned in close to each other, their roofs jagged like broken teeth. Half the windows were boarded shut.
On one corner sat a shop with faded paint on the doorframe and a sign carved with a mortar and pestle. The door stood open just enough for steam to drift out, carrying the smell of crushed leaves and bitter roots. Inside, shadowed shelves were crowded with jars, bundles of dried plants, and instruments of brass and bone.
A figure moved in the back — not the shopkeeper, but someone younger, sleeves rolled up, tying a bundle of herbs. Zayway didn't recognize them, but the precision in their movements stuck in his mind as he walked on.
⸻
A narrow passage took him deeper, where the stone beneath his boots changed — smoother, older. The air grew heavier here, and the noises of the city thinned until only the occasional drip of water remained.
At the end of the passage, a wall of stone bore carvings so weathered they were barely visible. He reached out to trace one, and for a second his fingers tingled, as though the mark still remembered being made.
Voices echoed from somewhere ahead.
⸻
He moved closer, keeping to the shadows, until he saw them — three figures standing in a half-circle. One held a lantern, the light pooling yellow on the wet stone. The other two bent over something on the ground.
As Zayway strained to see, the lantern-bearer shifted, and the light fell on the object between them — a small wooden box etched with the same twisting lines he'd seen on the smith's arms.
Sigils again.
⸻
One of the figures knelt and pressed their palm to the box. The lines flared briefly, and the air seemed to pulse. A faint metallic taste hit the back of Zayway's tongue, like blood and copper.
"Quickly," one of them whispered. "Before it draws attention."
Zayway didn't wait to see more. He eased back, taking the long way out of the passage until he found himself on a busier street, where the noise of vendors and chatter washed away the silence of the lower streets.
⸻
Mare's corner was crowded when he returned, though the faces were different from yesterday. A man with a crooked jaw was arguing over the price of smoked fish, while a girl in a patched coat traced the rim of a clay bowl with a chipped fingernail.
Mare noticed him immediately. "You've been wandering," she said flatly.
"Just looking," he replied.
"Looking will get you noticed." Her gaze shifted past him, toward a pair of figures lingering at the far edge of the crowd.
⸻
Zayway didn't have to ask who they were. The black armbands were enough.
The Iron Veil Hunters.
They weren't moving closer, but their stillness was worse than a chase. Even from here, he felt the weight of their eyes, measuring him.
Mare didn't speak again, but the tension in the air was answer enough.
For the rest of the afternoon, he stayed near the stall, but the feeling never left — that Hollow Deep was watching him just as much as its people were.
And somewhere in its shadowed streets, marks and names were being written that he didn't yet understand.
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